Animal intestines, in particular the small intestines as connected between the stomach and the large intestines, when properly processed, are a valuable and well-appreciated natural product which can be used, for example, as casing, or case, or skin, of sausages, and for other purposes. This is especially true for intestines of pigs, cows and sheep.
In an animal slaughtering process, a cluster of organs is removed from a body cavity of an animal. Next, organs and tissue are separated from the cluster to be further processed.
In one of these separating steps, at least a part of the cluster comprising an intestine and at least one other organ, such as the stomach, and tissue, is brought to an intestine separating station for separating the intestine from a remainder of the cluster, or part of the cluster. The cluster or cluster part may be hanging from a support of a mechanical transport device, such as a conveyer. The conveyor, which may be an endless conveyor, comprises a series of supports, each carrying a cluster or cluster part. By moving the supports continuously, or intermittently, one cluster or cluster part at a time is presented at the intestine separating station. The intestine separating station may be part of a so-called gut room for processing intestines.
Traditionally, at a separating station, a person separates the intestine by hand. The person holds a knife, comprising a handle and a one-sided elongated cutting blade, such as a razor blade, connected to the handle, in his or her hand. The knife and the intestine, while still connected to the cluster or cluster part, are moved relative to each other, whereby the knife moves closely along the intestine near its outer surface, and in its longitudinal direction.
In the intestine separating process, the intestine needs to be separated from deformable fatty tissue in which blood vessels leading to and from the intestine are embedded. Such blood vessels are also indicated by the term “whiskers”. In the harvesting of the intestine, it needs to be ensured that a separation or cut is made as closely as possible to the intestine to remove the fatty tissue as much as possible, and to obtain whiskers having a shortest possible length, without damaging the intestine.
The person, or operator, handling the knife must be educated and experienced in performing this task, which takes a relatively long time in practice.
The required working position for the operator's hand holding the knife is quite unnatural and uncomfortable, and may lead to symptoms in the hand, arm and related body parts of the operator.
As an example of a further tool for separating an intestine and fatty tissue from each other, reference US 2015/0017895 A1 discloses a device for separating an intestine subjected to a pulling force from a structure such as a fatty structure connected to the intestine by means of cutting. The device comprises a guide for guiding at least the intestine, and a cutting member connected to the guide for severing the structure in the vicinity of the intestine. The cutting member is adapted to sever the structure as closely as possible to the intestine. The cutting member has a cutting edge directed toward an open feed end of the guide. The guide comprises a gap arranged therein, the gap being adapted to guide the separation between the intestine and the fatty structure connected with the intestine from the feed end of the gap. The cutting member comprises a knife connected to the guide with its cutting edge at a distance from the guide. The cutting edge of the knife is connected to a holder in exchangeable manner at an angle differing from 90 degrees to the main direction of the gap.
Both the knife as handled traditionally by a person, or operator, and the device of reference US 2015/0017895 A1 have a disadvantage in that in practice a scraping action is performed with the knife cutting edge to separate the intestine from other tissue. The knife blade can only be used to separate a few hundreds of intestines before the cutting edge of the blade becomes unsuited for further use, and the blade needs to be replaced. This impedes the separation process, and leads to relatively high costs.
In addition, the device of reference US 2015/0017895 A1 is unsuitable for separating the intestine from the organ(s) to which it is connected in the digestive tract of the cluster of organs being processed, or to make a separation in the intestine. As an example, before performing the intended tissue separation in relation to a small intestine, the stomach usually has already been removed from the cluster of organs. Before the intended tissue separation, however, a short length section of the small intestine (previously) adjacent to the stomach must also be separated from the small intestine (herein referred to as “intermediate separation”), since this section cannot be used in the intended further processing of the small intestine. Furthermore, an opposite end of the small intestine must be separated from the adjacent large intestine by separating the connection between the small intestine and the large intestine (herein referred to as “large intestine separation”). For the intermediate separation and the large intestine separation, the small intestine cannot be brought into contact with the cutting edge of the knife, since the cross-section of the small intestine is too large to pass through the gap of the guide. Thus a further separating or cutting device is needed to cut said connections, which again impedes the tissue separating process, and therefore leads to inefficiency and loss of time and money.
NL 34253 C discloses an apparatus for cutting away a layer of fat from an intestine, comprising a rotatable circular knife or a reciprocating knife, and a security device comprising a pair of horns to guide the intestine and the apparatus relative to each other. The horns define a gap across which the knife may cut.